The Carnatal retreat was a lot of fun. Last year I missed it due to my trip to Rio de Janeiro with my sister and brother-in-law, so I was happy to be around for it. This year's theme was "In the Master's Steps," and you can probably guess what we studied. :) We were warned before the retreat started that there would be very little, if any, running water in the house. That meant disposable plates, little chance for showering, and we chose to stop there and try to not think about the bathroom situation! The young people at CDC decided to proceed with the retreat anyway and "rough it" for a few days, as this retreat is one we all look forward to all year. Boy are we glad we did! Turns out the water problem wasn't as big of a problem as we were anticipating, and by Saturday everyone was bathed and smelling fresh! We enjoyed time studying about what we must do to follow Jesus (decide to follow him, deny ourselves, love others, etc) as well as time to just hang out and play a lot of really silly games. They had great Bible-based activities planned (Bingo, a Bible-bowl competition, "find the verse and read it faster than anyone else," Bible character charades) as well as games like musical chairs, etc. Just another weekend that reminded me of how much I love my church family, and why I enjoy living alone! Ha! Enjoy the pictures:
Playing musical chairs where, if you didn't have a chair to sit in, you just sat in someone's lap. We had some visitors at the retreat and..well..I guess this served as a nice way to get to know each other fast. :)
We had lots of free time to spend time together, and the weather was so nice we spent a lot of time on the front porch. Since we didn't have access to a pool this year (no water, remember?) this was a very common scene. 
This night we had to turn our clothes inside out in order to be served dinner. It was fine for people like me who were wearing clothes that look the same on the inside as the outside. There were some people who were not so fortunate...like the girl wearing a dress with a polyester lining and the boy wearing swim trunks with netting on the inside. :) 
Bible character charades, Marta is acting out Joseph. Took us a while to get what she was doing. But she kept doing this over and over and over and over AND OVER until we understood that she was pulling on her own coat to resemble Potiphar's wife. 
3 comments:
That picture of Marta, and what it represents, is the cutest thing ever.
Hi Cris! I came across your blog again and was hoping to connect in some way. My name is Pete McReynolds and I'm from the Atlanta area. I'm engaged to a girl from Natal(getting married there on the 27th of this month), and am currently planning a mission trip to Natal in February. I'm bringing 15 high school students from Greater Atlanta Christian School(a Church of Christ K-12 school in Atlanta) in February. Maybe we could connect sometime. The plan is for this to become a annual trip for the school, so maybe in the future we could partner with some of the work you're doing in Natal. If you want to get in touch my email is pmcreynolds@gmail.com.
God bless!
Pete Mc
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